She made a quick inventory. Feet and legs okay. Stomach fine, internal organs, check. She was dazed but the fog was clearing. Her shoulders throbbed, but her arms were no longer merely numb. Now they felt paralyzed.
Adrian and Manfred entered the office.
“The bitch woke up,” Gerda said.
Manfred came to her and leaned over to peer into her eyes.
“You tricked me,” he said. “You’re not an OLAF investigator.”
“Did you tell them about the branches?” she asked Adrian.
“Shut up or I’ll gag you again.”
Gerda had drawn one of the stems from the laundry bag. She was turning it between her fingers like a freshly rolled joint.
“Cut me loose, Adrian.”
“Can’t do it,” he said. “You’re too valuable, and too dangerous.”
“Her?” Gerda scoffed.
Adrian’s phone buzzed, and he drew it out and checked the caller ID.
He answered it, listened for several moments. He closed his eyes and kept them closed for a long minute.
“Don’t do that, Bonnie. Do not do that. Wait. I’ll send someone to help you.”
He listened a little longer.
“All right. Then I’ll come myself. I’ll come soon, very soon. Don’t do anything till I arrive, okay? Can you promise me?”
When he clicked off, his face was pale. He shot Harper a quick, enigmatic look.
“Bonnie?” Manfred said. “Who is that?”
“Albion’s daughter. She got a pistol from somewhere and she’s holding her father hostage. Threatening to shoot him unless he confesses.”
“For god’s sake,” Manfred said. “Confess to what?”
“She says he’s been trying to kill her. Has to do with blood transfusions. Long story.”
“Albion’s still in Switzerland?” asked Manfred.
“Yeah, he won’t be attending our little soiree.”
Manfred walked to the desk, pointed at the laundry bag. “What’s this about?”
“Bixel sabotaged the groves,” Naff said. “It’s a disease called olive quick decline syndrome. A bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, spread by the meadow spittlebug. Bixel hired a man named Dickens to release infected insects into your groves months ago. The disease is a time bomb that’s been ticking all summer, and now it’s about to explode. Not long after you sign the documents and take title to the groves, you’ll discover you’re the owner of thousands of acres of dying trees.”
Gerda came slowly to her feet. “My mother did this?”
“Yes,” Harper said. She braced herself with an elbow and wriggled upright to a standing position in front of the chair. “The trees are beginning to die. You can see the tags on those branches, where each branch comes from. It started in the Bellomo grove, and it fanned out in all directions. Soon the government will come in and cut and burn it all. And that still won’t stop its spread.”
Adrian turned to Manfred.
“I’m curious about Bixel’s motive. Why would that very busy lady go to such lengths to fuck you over, kid? Spread this shit through the olive groves, wangle you into buying the groves. Why would she go to all that trouble? Got any ideas?”
Gerda swept the bag of stems off the desk. Her mouth twisted into a gargoyle’s dreadful scowl. “It’s justice,” she said. “Exactly what you deserve, you shit-covered pig. To lose everything. The mill, the olive groves. Everything.”
Manfred said, “Gerda is right. I am guilty of terrible wrongdoing.”
“What wrongdoing?”
“He fucked my mother, that’s what. Fucked her for years. They were in bed together while I toiled on the track and the field. While I sweated and strained, they kissed and fondled and whispered.”
“She seduced me,” Manfred said. “I was just a child. Barely fifteen. She got me drunk.”
“Fifteen, ha,” Gerda said. “A boy that age knows exactly what he’s doing. You were drunk on sex. You loved it so much you couldn’t stop for years.”
“And you, Gerda?” Manfred’s face was flushed, his throat quivering. “Did you also love the sex with your father, Max? Did you secretly enjoy it so much you waited years before you finally killed the bastard?”
“Whew,” Adrian said. “Wait a minute, let me process this.”
“So there you go, Naff,” said Harper, taking a cautious step forward. “You’ve got your cause and effect. Happy now?”
“Sit down and shut up, Harper,” he said. “Or I’ll put you down.”
To Harper’s right, she saw Larissa Bixel enter the plant’s front door. She was toting a briefcase and dressed in a black business suit with low heels. Behind her was a burly man wearing a similar suit. Bixel stopped to ask directions from a worker, who pointed to the glassed-in office.
Bixel and the man marched across the concrete floor and entered the office.
“Well, hey there, Graham,” Adrian said. “Come all this way to join our merry group. Bet you didn’t realize what you were getting into.”
“Oh yeah,” Graham said. “I realized.”
Graham was broad shouldered and just over six feet. His hands were large and big knuckled, and his square face was dinged from dozens of fistfights, some that looked recent. He moved with the sure-footed confidence of a heavyweight boxer who’d won more rounds than he’d lost. And there was a lump visible through his suit jacket near his left armpit, which told Harper that there were at least two handguns in the room.
For as long as she’d been conscious, Harper had been tensing and releasing her arms, trying to roll her shoulders just enough to bring circulation back to her extremities. At Marco’s insistence, she’d practiced escaping various restraints, police handcuffs, ropes, and chains. She’d had reasonable success with the zip tie, but in such close quarters she wasn’t sure she could pull off the technique.
She’d been inching her fingers around the plastic band, trying to locate the small, open case where the plastic teeth locked the tie in place. That joint was the weak link in the zip tie, but it had to be positioned exactly.
As Bixel came close and inspected Harper’s swollen face, Harper finally found the lock and began to edge it clockwise until the joint was in the gap between her crossed wrists, where the laws of physics made it most vulnerable.
Now with one hard smack of her wrists against her tailbone, the plastic band should snap open and her arms would be free. On the practice mats the move worked half the time. But during training she got a second chance and more chances if she needed them, while here in a room packed with adversaries, one crack was probably all she’d manage.
What worried her most was that even if she did break free, would her arms be able to serve her?
Bixel grabbed Harper’s shoulder and hauled her halfway around. She traced a finger along the edges of the zip tie, then curled a finger under the plastic band and tugged, testing its tightness.
Satisfied, she shoved Harper away and turned to face the room.
“Our boy Graham here,” Adrian said to the group, “he’s the top dog on my security team. Mean-ass ex-ranger, got all the necessary skills to murder whoever needs to get murdered. Right, buddy?”
“Thanks, Adrian,” Graham said. “Nice to meet you folks.”
Bixel turned to Graham and ordered him to go out onto the mill floor and send the workers away and, once they were gone, to make certain all the doors were locked.
When Graham left, Bixel said, “Did you punch McDaniel, Naff?”
Naff shrugged. “She wouldn’t shut up.”
“Well, I must confess, I’m pleasantly surprised you were true to your word and actually brought her along. I wasn’t sure you’d go through with it.”
“I want my daughter safe. If this is what it takes, fine.”
“I’m true to my word. Julie Marie has seen the last of us.”
“Okay,” Adrian said. “So take the bitch away. I want her out of my sight.”
“Easy now, Adrian. What’s your hurry?”<
br />
“Hello, Mother,” Gerda said. “Didn’t you see me over here?”
“I saw you, sweetness. Hello. So glad you could come. Now if you would be so kind as to help Mr. Graham escort McDaniel to the car, I’ll join you shortly.”
She favored her daughter with a smile.
“And me,” Manfred said. “Do I get no greeting? No sweetness?”
“From you, Mr. Knobel, we simply need a few signatures.”
She opened the briefcase and drew out the paperwork and arranged the documents on the desk and stepped aside. Harper caught sight of a dark glint inside the case. Maybe a weapon, maybe not.
Graham came back in, said, “Place is all locked up.”
“So then. If you please, Mr. Knobel. Let’s all be professionals, shall we? Sign the papers and we’ll all be on our way.”
“Manfred knows about the spittlebugs,” Harper said. “You’re too late. It’s not going to work.”
Bixel turned to Graham. “Get this fucking whore out of here. What’re you waiting for?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Harper took a quick breath, did a deep bow from the waist, lifted her hands behind her back as far as the restraints allowed, then slammed her wrists against her rump. The plastic strap cracked apart.
When she straightened and tried to throw her hands up in a defensive pose, she found her arms were mush.
“Shoot her, Graham. Do it now.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Naff said.
Naff was sighting Lombardi’s ancient automatic at Graham’s gut.
“Fuck you, Naff.” Graham lurched to his right, made a grab for Harper’s arm, trying to swing her in front of him as a shield.
Before he could close the distance, Harper snapped a side kick against Graham’s knee, nailed it, felt the joint give, heard the crunch.
Graham whooped and sagged away, trying to take her down with him as he fell, grabbing her wrist and dragging. She twisted her arm free, and when the big man landed on the floor, she stomped on the side of his head, adding another brushstroke to the scarred canvas of his face.
While focused on Graham, Harper had ignored the pistol shots, three of them, and one more as she was straightening.
Across the room, Adrian Naff was blown backward against the wall of photographs, his body twisting as he gasped and sank to the floor. A foot from where Adrian fell, Manfred was huddled behind the desk, whimpering, “No, no, no.”
Larissa Bixel swung her aim to Harper, a compact Glock 43, ten feet between them. “Now, Gerda, you will do what I say. It is best that you do not witness any more of this. Go outside and sit in the car. It’s a white Audi parked directly across the street. Go now, girl, while I clean up this mess.”
“No.”
“Gerda, go. Follow orders, dear.”
“Fuck your orders.”
While Bixel was glaring at her daughter, Harper dived to the side of the desk. Sliding across the floor, she fumbled for the pistol that had spilled from Naff’s hands. Clutching it finally with her deadened fingers.
Before she could regain her footing, two rounds blew apart the oak veneer near her head, one shot clipped Manfred in the shoulder, and he began to keen a wild banshee scream.
Harper rolled into the desk’s kneehole. Below the skirt of the desk, she followed Bixel’s ankles and low heels as she stalked around the perimeter. Harper aimed a yard above the ankles and fired through the wood, two shots, three, and another until Bixel barked in pain.
Surging from the kneehole, Harper sighted on Bixel’s chest, an arm’s length away. Bixel’s eyes were woozy, her head making small circles as if to find her balance on the dizzy floor beneath her. Her arms were slack, the Glock hanging out of sight, beneath the level of the desk. Near her waist, a ragged tear in the fabric of her suit seeped blood.
“Drop that gun. I want to hear it hit the floor.”
But Bixel didn’t move. She held Harper’s stare, as if daring her to fire, daring her to take down a defenseless woman.
“Shoot her,” Gerda said from across the room. “Shoot the bitch. Go on, do it. Why are you waiting?”
Even as Bixel lifted the Glock inch by inch with grim, wobbly effort, she remained a helpless target. Despite Harper’s claims, when the moment came, she couldn’t do it.
Killing the woman in such a state was unpardonable, a violation of the line Harper had drawn for herself in years of training.
Bixel’s Glock was waist-high, still pointed to the floor.
“Not as easy as you thought.” Bixel’s speech was a slurred hiss, the clumsy tongue of a drunk.
“Drop it,” Harper said again. “Goddamn it. Drop it now.”
“Not so easy, is it?” Bixel said. “Not so easy to kill.”
The muzzle of the Glock was tipping up, then coming level.
“Easy enough,” Harper said.
Harper’s arms were still weak and trembling, but she had to trust her training. She’d worked too hard to do otherwise.
She dropped Lombardi’s pistol on the desktop, snapped out her open hand, and seized the Glock, wrenching it from Bixel’s grasp. As wired as she was at that moment, there wasn’t a butterfly on earth that could have escaped her.
She caught a glimpse of Gerda stalking around the far side of the desk. Harper flung the pistol, aiming at Gerda’s head, but she ducked, and the pistol smashed into the wall of glass, sending cracks across its length. In the return motion, Harper chopped Bixel’s throat, a blow so hard and so precisely struck it sent the woman staggering backward, clutching her neck, gagging, and Harper tracked her across the room, ready to hack her throat again, crush her larynx, snap her hyoid bone, forever cut off air to her lungs, except Bixel’s head snapped to one side, two blasts of the Glock sending slugs into her face, tearing it apart, her nerveless body lurching backward and going down.
Before Harper could swing around to face the pistol, Gerda dropped it on the floor and screamed and leaped high across the desk and mounted Harper’s back.
She clenched her thighs around Harper’s waist and locked her ankles and, in the same instant, looped a silk scarf around Harper’s throat, yanked it hard, and held on.
Harper grabbed Gerda’s hands, but the bite of the scarf was quickly turning her arms and legs to slush. With the noose already sinking so deep, Harper had only seconds to find a solution before she choked out.
Across the room she spotted a flimsy possibility, and with that vague idea floating dimly before her, she staggered around the desk, Gerda’s breath heaving in Harper’s right ear. Ten feet to the glass door, half that to the clear panel that looked onto the plant floor.
The workers were gone, but the mill continued to churn, a low grumble of machinery vibrating through the floor. Millstone turning, stainless steel hammers bashing, the conveyer belt rattled on with only a few straggling olives bouncing along inside its ridged trays.
Gerda muscled the scarf tighter, and her legs crushed Harper’s ribs. Harper pried her fingers under the scarf, but they were too soft to open a gap, and worse, she was starting to feel lazy and indifferent, a melancholy gloom darkening the edges of her vision.
Inside the haze, a single wink of light drew her toward the glass wall. The glimmer of Leo’s smile, the flicker in her husband’s eyes, Ross and Leo, those two fading lights retreating into a distant fog bank.
Harper used her last seconds of clarity to focus on her footwork, a cross-step, a half spin, then she bent her knees and executed a backward thrust, vaulting into the ten-foot expanse of glass. Banging Gerda’s back against it, then banging again. But that didn’t break her hold. If anything, Gerda cinched the scarf tighter.
Harper reckoned she had only a handful of seconds before she blacked out. She tried one more backward thrust, put her remaining strength into the leap, driving Gerda’s backside into the glass. And this time the glass gave way, the wide single sheet fracturing around them and breaking apart in a cascade of splinters and large wedges.
Gerda scre
amed as the razory glass rained down.
Harper was cut, arms, face, ear, but it hardly mattered.
The scarf fell away from her throat, though Gerda’s legs remained clamped around Harper’s waist.
Fine, fine, everything was always fine in Marco’s world. No sweat, stay quiet inside the fray, stay smooth and supple, and work with what’s at hand. Use the tools before you.
To her right Harper saw the bottom frame of the glass wall still held the jagged remnants of the waist-high window, a row of spiky teeth like the lower jaw of a shark.
She kept her backward tilt and walked Gerda’s backside along the glass saw blade. Blocking out her wails, Harper walked the entire length of the office and started a return trip, slicing up the meat of Gerda’s back and rump, feeling the warm blood saturating Harper’s pants, running down her legs. Hers or Gerda’s, it didn’t matter.
Until Gerda let go. Until Gerda fell away.
Gasping and still faint, Harper stood over the young woman lying on her back, panting. Gerda opened her eyes and struggled to rise as Harper raised her shoe and stepped on Gerda’s throat and bore down until the high jumper, the Olympic silver medalist, stopped flailing, stopped quivering, and finally, before Gerda ceased all movement, Harper lifted her foot.
Across the factory floor, beside the rumbling machinery of the production line, the front door caved in, and four men in black body armor and automatic weapons poured through. As Harper was sinking to her knees, she glimpsed the tall African American woman in a Kevlar vest and a handgun at the ready, leading the pack of agents into the olive mill.
Lavonne. Lavonne.
FORTY-ONE
University Hospital, Bari, Italy
The surgeon stitching up Harper’s wounds protested bitterly, but while he worked, Harper insisted on calling Sal in Madrid.
“Hey, kid, molte grazie for the heads-up,” he said. “You were right. Guy named Derek Müller showed up with a big-ass pistol. Marvin spots him coming in the front door, grabs him while he’s trying to sneak up the back stairway, then drags the kid into an empty room, beats the holy mother of Christ out of the little shithead until he confesses who he worked for. No surprise there, it was Bixel. Then Marvin pitches the turdball out a third-story window. Sadly, the kid didn’t survive the landing. Police are investigating, bless their hearts. Wish them luck in their endeavors.”
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 28